24.0 Children
painful for children
All of the participants in this
study mention children in one way or another in relation to shame. They speak
of children a total of 124 times in the interviews (appendix 4) and thereby
being the form of significant others that are most referred to. This might indicate
that children are the prime focus at the Incest Centre, both among employees
and users. In this chapter, I will focus on Child-Blaming and Child-Shaming,
which on the background from the informants, seem to be when children are given
the responsibility for sexual abuse and condemned (both by themselves and
others) through the use different form of shame, such as: exclusion;
disrespect; humiliation; and stigmatizing actions. Child-Blaming and Children-Shaming
has in my opinion much in common with Mother-Blaming and Mother-Shaming. Both
children and women seem to experience abuse from fathers and husbands who
oppress and victimize them to a degree that they at times become incapable of
action. They are both in need of recognition and respect instead of being
blamed and shamed.24.1 Child-Blaming and Child-Shaming
One of the workers, Ruth, tells a
story about a young girl who learned at an early age not to complain and to do
as adults told her, even if this included being sexually abused. This girl
found that protesting and crying only made the abuse worse. When her abuser
burnt her hand on the kitchen stove, she was effectively silenced. Ruth argues
that shame is an emotion which for some people develops over time. Shame can
arise from a single act, but she argues that it often takes time for a child to
realize that the abuse is wrong. This process often starts by the child feeling
different from others and starts to believe that it is not the abuse that is
wrong but that there is something wrong with them as children.
Ruth_1: Children
learn very quickly to do as grownups say (.) and often, I can give you an example ((lifts her hand and covers
part of her mouth)). This girl learned
early on that (.) complaining didn’t
help, it only made the abuse become more severe, and it happened more often and
got violent. It didn’t help to cry either. She would just be beaten even more.
The earliest thing she could remember was when she was four years old ((she
moves her hand under her chin, covers her mouth with her thumb and looks down)) when her hand has placed on a hot burner on
a kitchen stove to get her to keep silent. It was her father who abused her (.). And from that day on, she never mentioned
the abuse with a single word, not until she grew up…I think shame is something
that builds up over time. That’s what I believe. But of course that shame can
also come from a transgression or an action (.). But it develops over a period of time, when the child moves around in
the world, and discovers that other children do not experience what they
experience, umm they think that something must be wrong with them. What is it?
Are they so ugly and terrible that they deserve all this? Umm shame in a way
develops over time to become so profound, but it is connected to offences and
results in the child feeling that it is different…When an act of abuse is over;
the child hurries to hide, so that no one can discover or see her. I think
shame also develops in relation to something, things (.) the child has been
subjected to.
Ruth seems to experience shame while
telling this story of sexual abuse through her non-verbal communication
(appendix 20); covering her mouth and looking down. The little girl in this
story is sexually abused at the age of only four and is tortured by being
beaten and burnt. Her reactions are that of hiding and feeling that something
is wrong with her. This seems in my opinion to be an expression of body shame
which the child is showing, and this continues to develop by an increased
negative self-image and self-esteem. Ruth also argues that shame is often used
in the upbringing of children. She tells a story about how she herself shamed
her daughter in front of a friend of hers. She could see how her daughter’s
behavior changed and how her daughter blushes which in my opinion can be
conceived as a handling strategy of shame (appendix 20).
Ruth: I believe, I believe that umm in relation to my own children, that I
raise them ((gazes up at the ceiling))
by shaming them…For example (.) I remember that I was raised that way also. Not
that I use it consciously but I catch myself doing it ((nods her head and
holds her hand in front of her mouth)). I
remember when my oldest daughter had a friend visiting her and she was about to
go in to her brother’s room, and I said that she could not go in there, I told
her to get out, and I scolded her in front of the others. Then I saw how this
affected her…She acted really weird, her face was flushed, and she really felt
ashamed ( ). I think we are very good at bringing up children with shame. “You
should be ashamed of yourself.” When I think about it now, I believe that this
is not good for children ((clears her throat)), yeah ( )…I was scolded as a child in front of others,
and it’s not a good feeling…Sharpen up your act or pull yourself together while
others are listening when you talk to your child in that way ( ) it’s
not a good feeling. And then I can also feel shame…My father was an expert at
scolding me in front of others. I can remember that very well. My little
daughter’s face was blood-red…why do we raise our children by shaming
them?
The use of shame in the upbringing
of children seems in my opinion, to be viewed as an effective way to make
children realize they have ignored social norms or moral values. Ferguson, Stegge, Miller
and Olsen (1999) argue that studies on shame and guilt in children are
difficult to compare directly because the research linking self-conscious
emotions to psychopathology in children typically focuses on one emotion while
ignoring the other – examining only shame or guilt, but not both, in relation
to other variables. They have carried out a study on guilt and shame in a
sample of 86 children. Their results
show that children demonstrate that guilt and shame are two distinctly
different, self-conscious emotions in children. There was a high intensity of
guilt responses on the scenario-based scales which signal their awareness of
the pro-social or moral values that guide behavior, their acceptance of
responsibility, and their desire to make amends for bad behavior. Shame proved
to be associated with self-oriented explanations, in which children were less
likely to distance themselves from the painful feeling by viewing the action as
uncharacteristic of the self, by minimizing the self, or by excusing the self.
Acknowledging shame in children’s minds was the same as implicating the self in
what happened. This study shows in my opinion the importance of exploring both
guilt and shame in children, and that even though children may seem to
distinguish between the two emotions; they seem in my opinion to merge in
certain situations, such as in sexual abuse.
The child may experience shame in my
opinion, when social norms and moral values are threatened but believes instead
that the fault lies within oneself. This shame is often embodied; it indicates
that there is something wrong with the body. Linda speaks of a child who was
sexually abused by her uncle. The child believed that she was being abused
because there was something wrong with her body. She also tells us about a
child who was given the responsibility of telling her abuser when she wanted
the abuse to stop, and this was something that she did not dare to do.
Linda_1: There
was a girl who said to me that umm, she was being abused by her uncle, and she
had a sister who wasn’t. She wasn’t very old. Maybe seven or eight I think. And
she said ((looks down on her shoes))
umm she said that there was something wrong with her body. Because he didn’t do
it with her sister. That’s what she said ((scratches the back of her ear)). She was really looking for something here ((scratches
her forehead)). She didn’t say that she
was being abused ((hides behind her hand)). She said that umm her uncle was like that because of her and her body,
because he wasn’t like that when her mom and her sister were there. That’s what
she said. So that umm (.) and then
she wondered whether it was the way she walked, the way she sat, or what it was
about her body?...Many abusers say that you have to tell them when you want
them to stop. But the kid is just too scared and can’t say a word…And umm they
also have a way of altering things. And I have had a lot of conversations about
this, small children who tell me what they actually do. It can be anything; it
depends on the situation in which the abuse takes place, and one of them said
that she bit her thumb because the pain there was so strong that the abuse
disappeared…She pretended to be sucking on her thumb and then she bit her thumb
till the pain got so strong that umm what was happening under the quilt went
away. They try to reframe the action.
Linda speaks of a child who
experiences herself as defective, ugly and that something is wrong with her
body. Wells and Jones (2000) argue that individuals who feel themselves to be
naturally defective are also more likely to feel excessively bad about making
mistakes. Feeling that one is defective may thus cause individuals to feel
excessive guilt fused together with shame. I notice in this story that Linda
seems in my opinion here to show non-verbal markers of shame (appendix 20) when
speaking of this child who was sexually abused; looking down and hiding behind
her hands. This indicates the difficulty workers also feel in receiving stories
of sexual abuse; some will feel shame and for some also past emotions related
to their own sexual abuse might become re-activated, some might also show signs
of re-victimization.
Olga argues that shame is very
painful for a child. When children are abused, they are not just physically
damaged, the relation between adult and child changes, and it is within this
damaged relationship that shame develops.
Olga: But I also believe that ((braids her fingers together in front of
her)) a little child who experiences
this, that it is not just physical damage, something unconscious also happens ((moves
her hand up and down from her head to her stomach)), because of power, I’m not very good at finding the right words. But
something happens between an adult and a child in a situation like that…Shame
is very painful for a child.
Sexual abuse seems to be related to
power and not just the physical acts that are committed. Olga claims that
something happens to the child on an unconscious level because of the power
dimension which is involved in the abuse. In my opinion, Olga is speaking of
the relation between children and adults that is characterized by a difference
in power. When the relation can also be characterized by trust, as with parents,
and the consequences of sexual abuse might seem to be greater. When the
trusting relationship is replaced with a misuse of power, the shame which Olga
speaks of here becomes even greater in my opinion for the child.
In this section, I have taken a
closer look at the relation between Child-Blaming and Child-Shaming, and in my
opinion these categories have much in common with Mother-Blaming and
Mother-Shaming, with the possible same destructive spiral for the development
of self as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment